Light In Her Darkness
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Ashley thinks about Craig after the breakup in season 3.


Just this gentle music raining down on her. Just this looking out at the snow covered shed, the snow a perfect sheet of white in the sun, branches swaying in a breeze. Feeling wrung out, her eyes burning from the crying that was over now. She was waiting for some light in her darkness.

Craig. What had she been thinking? He had seemed so trustworthy, beyond trustworthy, someone who could protect her. Where did that come from? Damaged boy who could hardly protect himself, just what had she been thinking? Thinking that she liked how tall he was, liked the sound of his voice, liked the crackly challenge of breaking through his defenses, breaking down his fences. Maybe that's what she had been thinking.

Well, he'd showed her, hadn't he? Showed her that her love was no match for a violent past and certain inabilities that began to glare. She was 15 and she wanted certain things, maybe she couldn't really understand the pain of others and why she couldn't get what she wanted. Had she pushed him away? Took for granted the gestures that were hard for him to make but he made them anyway? Ignored the fact that Craig had to protect himself emotionally for a long time and that didn't just go away because things were better now.

The plaintive voices coming from her radio, singing versions of her pain. She'd add her own voice which was better than their's, and the singing made her feel better. Trying so hard to feel better since she'd seen the bracelet on Manny's wrist.

This was the darkest place she'd ever been in. Betrayal was bitter, like poison in her throat, the poison spreading to every cell, and every cell began its slow death. She longed for things to be how they were before, and this was her first experience with the violent wishing away of the present, the realization that there was no going back.

She loved Craig and it had been easy before. Loved the way he ducked his head and the way he looked right into her eyes. Loved the color of his eyes and the way his clothes hung on him and the halting, pausing quality of his speech. It was just short of a stutter, and it sort of served to remind her that despite his intelligence and creativity he was deeply injured, he was a tragic boy but she could reach him. Of course she could.

Well, well. Not so simple after all. The instruments in the songs stretched out notes to the breaking point, reaching out for her and she let herself be wrapped in them, in the crescendo of notes climbing toward an unknowable sky. Unknowable God. Was someone watching over her? Because right now it didn't feel like it.

Craig had cheated on her. Why? Did he not love her? Could he not really say it because he didn't really feel it? Was it just hard for him to say despite feeling it because of his past? The love that had hurt him before? Was it just his issues or was it her? She couldn't know. Could never know the secret red walls of another's heart. But she knew her own heart. Knew she loved him with a blinding white light intensity that she had never felt before. Knew he made her feel alive in places she'd never known existed before. Knew he had made life worth living even though she felt it was before, but not like this.

The hurt was so real, like smoke, like dust, something you couldn't get rid of, couldn't breathe through. When she saw that bracelet on Manny's wrist it was like pause on a DVD, everything frozen in perfect clarity. That's where he had been. That explained the funny tone in his voice sometimes.

Light blue winter sky. Songs dripping over her, she was so sad she couldn't think of her own words for it and let the songs carry the hurt for her. Craig. Craig Manning, her boyfriend until just this week, and she felt it like it was every instant, like it was new. She had no one. She wasn't connected to another, holding hands in the hall, talking on the phone, kissing on the stoops outside their closed doors. It was gone. Dust.

The dance last year, his violent temper and anger and angst, and she'd watched. He was in a place she couldn't imagine but respected. His tragedies made him real, made him mature. He snapped at her on the steps when she tried to tell him he needed to take care of it, not at a dance. But what did she know? How could she know that the denial was a necessary part of healing? He couldn't explain it to her so he snapped, insulted her. She felt for that instant that they were much older, that this relationship was much older. They were 30 year olds on a run down porch, they were 40 year olds in a beat up chevy ford. They pushed and pulled at each other and she didn't understand it, being 14.

But he came back, the anger gone, and he was a lost little boy, the tears drying on his cheeks. His parents were gone. She forgave him, snapping at her, it was okay. But she was cautious, afraid to speak to him. He took her hand, led her onto the dance floor, and her love twisted up in her fear of him. When he spoke his voice was husky, mature beyond that of a 14 year old boy.

Craig? How could he do that to her? Cheat on her with Manny? How could she ever forgive him? The betrayal was knife cuts, slicing her and burning, going deep. Her tears were thick, viscous, and brought no relief.

How could she stand to see him at school? Passing by her in the halls? How could her sanity stand that? She could see it, too, catching the glimpses of him. Her heart shrinking, folding in on itself, until she could disappear in the hole it had created. Emptiness.

Her favorite sad song on her CD skipping, catching, the notes doubling back on themselves. She stared at the bright line of sun on the edge of the shed's roof. She felt like a lawyer, going over all the evidence. Did he cheat on her because he felt too close to her, that scared him? That's what she wanted to be the truth. Love scared him because he loved his mother and she died, he loved his father and he hit him, he loved her and so he would hurt her first. Was she paying because love had never worked out for him? Was the price of that hers to pay? Did she love him enough to cough up?

Maybe he didn't love her at all. He couldn't say it because he didn't feel it. He loved Manny. Manny of all people with her childish voice and slutty clothes. Manny with her blind worship of him. She couldn't worship him like he was a rock star or something, but she thought what they had was more real than that. That they understood deeper aspects than that. Was she wrong?

It was hard to even be, to exist in her space. This loneliness for another person throwing her out of whack, throwing her for a loop. Longing and anger warring inside her gray fraying neurons, making her dizzy. The boy she had waited to see, she couldn't even look at him. The boy whose voice whispered into her ear, she couldn't stand to hear. She was burned. She was scarred. Maybe beyond repair.

Craig, why did he have to make everyone as hurt and as broken as he was? Why did he have to destroy what they had? And, more importantly, was there a way that they could ever get it back?


End file.
